Book excerpt: This beautiful anthology brings together over 250 poems about flowers, plants and trees from eight centuries of writing in English, creating a rich bouquet of intriguing juxtapositions. Fourteenth-century lyrics sit next to poems of the twenty-first century; celebrations of plants native to the English soil share the volume with more exotic plant poetry. There are thirty poems about roses, by poets as diverse as Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker and the South African, Seitlhamo Motsapi; but there are also sections devoted to more unusual plants such as the mandrake, the starapple and the tamarind. An ex-gardener, the celebrated poet Sarah Maguire brings her extensive horticultural knowledge to bear on all the poems, arranging them into botanical families, identifying the plants being written about and writing a fascinating introduction. Whether you are a poetry lover, a gardener, a botanist, or simply the purchaser of the occasional bunch of flowers, this unique anthology allows you to luxuriate amidst the world's flora.